With the explosion of the information ago that has occurred over the past decade, consumers have been inundated with the availability of many new and different communications devices that can send and receive messages. In today's world, it is not uncommon for a single consumer to have a home email address, a work email address, a mobile phone, an instant messaging service, a mobile phone, a PDA etc, etc. With all these communications devices being capable of receiving messages, ensuring that a consumer has physically received all of her messages in a timely fashion can involve a great deal of effort on the consumer's part. Complicating the problem is the fact that many (if not most) of the communications devices which are available to consumers today are not compatible with each since most of these communications devices handle their messages in different communications protocols.